and thus produced what we call Natural Religion in its lowest and simplest form,--fear, awe, reverence, and love of the gods1. History v. Theory. After we have once established these premisses, there are two ways open for the study of Natural Religion. We may try to find out by means of abstract reasoning what ideas would naturally spring from these simple premisses, how the perception of the Infinite could be realised in language, and what could or could not be predicated of those undefined 1 I doubt whether the writer of an interesting article in the Scots Magazine, Feb. 1889, can have attended all my lectures at Glasgow. He says that my definition of religion seemed to him to labour under four objections: 6 1. That it is not traced back to the promiscuum (read proximum) genus, just as much and just as little as the definition modus cognoscendi, etc.' But my definition traces religion back to one proximum genus only, and not to two. It traces it back to experience, and nothing else, not to both cognoscere and colere. 2. That it is expressed in terms which require definition.' I say no, unless I have laboured in vain in trying to show that the experience of the infinite is as palpable as that of the finite. The infinite in this its simplest and most primitive sense seems to me to require no further definition, nay to admit of none, whereas the concept of Deus is so full of historical ingredients that it almost defies definition. 3. He doubts' whether my definition of religion, though it may include Buddhism, would include Fetishism.' Fetishism is, as I believe to have shown, the very last corruption of religion; but even in that corrupt form religion is based on the perception of something beyond the actual in the actual. And even if the fetish is coerced by blows instead of being importuned by prayers, the moral element is still present in the act of the worshipper. 4. My critic says 'that there are some religions which do not affect moral character, but only move the individual to the mechanical performance of certain external acts.' Yes, but these are again corruptions of religion, and perfectly intelligible in their downward movement. Would any one say that a Megatherion ought not to be defined as a living animal, because we know it in its petrified form only? agents or agencies that had been discovered behind, or above, or within nature. Theory. It might be asked, for instance, whether the human mind could be satisfied with an indefinite number of such beings, or whether after a time the mere love of simplicity would lead on to the admission of one supreme being only. Again, it might be asked whether anything beyond mere existence could be predicated of the infinite, or whether, after the existence of supernatural powers has been admitted and their number fixed, any further qualities could be ascribed to them. We know that the answer, which was given, quite regardless as yet of historical facts, has been that it could be done in three ways, and in three ways only. Causalitas. First, these beings might be looked upon, not as identical with nature, but as behind nature; not as what is, but as the cause of what is; or, in the earliest stages of human thought and language, as makers, shapers, fathers, and rulers of the world. This is the conception of the divine per viam causalitatis. Eminentia. Secondly, as they were conceived as powerful and perfect, whatever qualities seemed most excellent in human nature, might be safely ascribed to them in a supreme degree. This is the conception of the divine per viam eminentiae. Negatio. Thirdly, whatever seemed imperfect in human nature, or at all events, weak and limited, could safely be negatived of divine beings, per viam negationis. Cosmological, Teleological, Ontological Arguments. Again, the so-called proofs of the existence of divine beings or in the end of one Supreme God, the Cosmological, Teleological, and Ontological, might be examined and reasoned out, without any reference to the history of religious thought. All this might be done, and has been done and well done, and I have little doubt that some of the lecturers on Lord Gifford's foundation will do full credit to this side of our subject, to what is generally called the Philosophy of Religion. Historical Method. I myself, however, am not going to follow this course, and this for various reasons. First of all, the philosophy of religion has such eminent representatives in Scotland, and more particularly in this University, that I should feel it presumptuous on my part to treat a subject which has been much better treated in this place than I could hope to do. Secondly, all my own special studies have been devoted to the history of religion, and I can hardly be mistaken in supposing that it was for this reason that I was chosen to fill this lectureship. Thirdly, I must openly confess that I have great faith in history, as showing to us, if not the best possible, at all events the only real arguments in support of the tenets of Natural Religion. To the philosopher the existence of God may seem to rest on a syllogism; in the eyes of the historian it rests on the whole evolution of human thought. The opinions elaborated by the whole of mankind 'with all their fluctuations and contradictions,' seem to me to carry a certain weight, and, at all events, to convey more instruction than the system of any or even of all of our living philosophers. Nor is it necessary that an historical study should exclude contemporary history. The philosophers of to-day will to-morrow be philosophers of yesterday, and if they have added anything original to the inherited stock of human knowledge, they will take their proper place in the historical Council of the world. Whatever questions I have had to deal with, I have always found their historical treatment and solution the most satisfactory. If we do not understand a thing, if we hardly know what it is, what it means, and how to call it, it is always open to us to try to find out how it has come to be what it is. It is wonderful how this method clears our thoughts, and how it helps us to disentangle the most hopeless tangles which those who came before us have left to us as our inheritance. This historical method has regenerated the study of language, it has infused a new spirit into the study of ancient law; why should it not render the same kind of help to an independent study of religion? Archaeology. Nowhere, perhaps, can we see more clearly the different spirit in which these two schools, the historical and the theoretical, set to work than in what is called by preference the Science of Man, Anthropology; or the Science of People, Ethnology; or more generally the science of old things, of the works of ancient men, Archaeology. Theoretic School. The Theoretic School begins, as usual, with an ideal conception of what man must have been in the beginning. According to some, he was the image of his Maker, a perfect being, but soon destined to fall to the level of ordinary humanity. According to others, he began as a savage, whatever that may mean, not much above the level of the beasts of the field, and then had to work his way up through successive stages, which are supposed to follow each other by a kind of inherent necessity. First comes the stage of the hunter and fisherman, then that of the breeder of cattle, the tiller of the soil, and lastly that of the founder of cities. But while one school of anthropologists would thus derive civilisation by a gradual evolution from the lowest savagery, another school considers the savage as a stationary and quiescent being, so much so that it bids us recognise in the savage of to-day the unchanged representative of the primordial savage, and encourages us to study the original features of man in such survivals as the Bushmen, the Papuans and the Cherokees. These two views might seem contradictory, unless we distinguish between stationary savages and progressive savages, or define at least the meaning of the word, before we allow it to enter into our scientific currency. Again, as man is defined as an animal which uses tools, we are told that, according to the various materials of which these tools were made, man must |